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On Friday, shortly after President Donald Trump's announcement of air strikes against Syria, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow twice put on her tinfoil hat, alleging that there is a "perception that the president may have ordered these strikes in part because of scandal," and that Trump's decision "may have ... (been) inflected by the scandals surrounding him." Maddow even contended that this alleged perception of scandal-driven decision-making will "affect the impact and the effectiveness of these military strikes." Maddow's first speculation appeared shortly after Trump's announcement:Transcript RACHEL MADDOW: As we follow the news in these incredible days that we have been having recently...

Jointly published by the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon and the Middle East Forum   Vol. 2   No. 6 Table of ContentsMEIB Main Page 1 July 2000  Lockerbie Trial Document: Susan Lindauer Deposition4 December 1998 Last month, MEIB reported that Dr. Richard Fuisz, a major CIA operative in Syria during the 1980s, met with a congressional staffer by the name of Susan Lindauer in 1994 and told her that that the perpetrators of the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland were based in Syria [see "The Lockerbie Bombing Trial: Is Libya Being...

Former Iranian intelligence officer says Tehran ordered downing of plane over Lockerbie in retaliation for US attack on Iranian airliner. Who was responsible for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland? While the Libyan government was thought to have masterminded the terrorist attack, a bombshell documentary by Al Jazeera quotes a former Iranian intelligence officer as saying that it was Iran that ordered the atrocity. The former agent, Abolghassem Mesbahi, who defected to Germany from Iran, is quoted by the Telegraph as saying that flight 103 was downed in retaliation for a US Navy strike on...

The dominant narrative of modern Middle East history emphasizes European colonization and accepts as a truism that the former colonial powers prioritized the protection of their material interests—in oil, above all—above the dignity and self-determination of the region’s inhabitants. --Thus did botched decolonization result in endless instability...Thus did the region become a breeding ground for radicalism, intensified by Cold War rivalry between the superpowers, who replaced the European colonizers as the region’s meddling overlords...Then came Mikhail Gorbachev—a Westernizing reformer. At last, the Cold War was over. A new world order was at hand. What if this conventional wisdom is nonsense?...

At the Simmons College leadership conference in Boston on Thursday, former first lady Michelle Obama praised her husband’s presidency while taking a veiled swipe at the current occupant of the White House. She said that her husband’s administration was “like having the good parent at home.” In Michelle Obama’s warped view, her husband filled the national role of a “responsible parent, the one who told you to eat your carrots and go to bed on time.” This analogy is ridiculous as a “good parent” would not practically double the national debt, socialize healthcare, unconstitutionally grant amnesty to illegal aliens and...

A New Paleolithic Revolution Image Caption: The ‘Rangki Papa’ (‘Father of all Rafts’) built using Palaeolithic technology and approaching the coast of Komodo, Bali, having succeeded in crossing from Sumbawa, 7 October 2004. The vessel travelled 36.4km in 9 hours 22 minutes Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D. and Dr Sean KingsleyJuly/August 2007 For decades archaeologists have rightly respected the Neolithic period c. 8500 BC as a revolutionary era of the most profound change, when the wiring of mankind’s brain shifted from transient hunter-gathering to permanent settlement in farming communities. Hearths, temples, articulated burials, whistling ‘wheat’ fields and security replaced the...

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was placed in custody on Tuesday as part of an investigation into allegations he received millions of euros in illegal campaign financing from the regime of the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. A judicial source with direct knowledge of the case told The Associated Press that Sarkozy was being held at the Nanterre police station, north-west of Paris. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Sarkozy has vehemently and repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the case, which involves funding for his winning 2007 presidential campaign. Though...

As part of its exclusive series on Libya during the rule of late leader Moammar al-Gaddafi, Asharq Al-Awsat examines the regime’s ties with local and foreign powers, including its attempts to finance western presidential campaigns, particularly in France, the United States and Ukraine. Witnesses from the former regime said that Tripoli had spent some 50 million euros in 2007 to fund the campaign of French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. Lebanese businessman Ziad Takeieddine, who was present at Sarkozy’s meetings with Gaddafi revealed that the “figures were much higher than that.” Tripoli also pumped 5 million dollars in the presidential campaign...

I like to wait for the dust to clear before opining on events.  Not everyone does. The bodies of the victims of the Parkland shooting weren't cold before democrats clawed their way to the front of TV cameras. A nice touch. Of course, obama had to be heard. Left wing news outlets leaped at the report that Cruz was a member of a white nationalist group. https://twitter.com/Salon/status/964268928066351104Time: Accused Parkland Shooter Nikolas Cruz Was a Member of white supremacist group Republic of Florida. Just one problem. He is not a member of the Republic of Florida. Local law enforcement sources have...

With each passing week, those who are paying attention are becoming increasingly aware of the trouble that is brewing on Israel's northern border. With the recent escalation with Syria, in which an Israel F-16 was shot down and Israel responded by taking out 8 Syrian and 4 Iranian positions just 32 miles to her north, plus the increasing pressure on Israel from Turkey, Vatican City and those who would delight in seeing the Jewish people wiped from the face of the earth. Now would be a very good time to check your vertical alignment. Events heralding the soon return of...

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan accused key Clinton allies of helping craft a second anti-Trump dossier and accused them of “rigging the game,” Tuesday on “Fox & Friends.” Jordan was asked about a possible second dossier and said Clinton operatives Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer had paid Christopher Steele to do opposition research, but then told Steele which specific details to include. “The names we keep hearing are Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer — people who have been around the Clintons as being a part of this. But I also think it’s kind of interesting because what it looks like is,...

Washington (CNN)House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes hinted Friday that there would be additional memos released regarding the committee's investigation into alleged abuse of FISA warrants -- and the next one may look at the State Department. (snip) "We are in the middle of what I call 'phase two' of our investigation, which involves other departments," Nunes said. "Specifically the State Department and some of the involvement they had in this."

The time for pious American lectures is over. North Korea North Korea seeks respect on the cheap — and attention and cash — that it cannot win the old-fashioned way by the long, hard work of achieving a dynamic economy or an influential culture. Over the last quarter-century, it has proved that feigned madness and the road to nuclear weapons (Pakistan is another good example) provide a shortcut to all three goals: It is now feared, in the news, and likely to receive another round of Western danegeld. Setting off a bomb (as opposed to merely bragging that it soon...

A video showing migrants being tortured by human traffickers in Libya went viral on social media following a report by CNN showing footage of migrants being sold as slaves there. The last two scenes of the video shows migrants being subjected to unprecedented torture and brutality. A migrant who was completely stripped of his clothes cries out in pain as the trafficker burns a plastic bottle and drips hot plastic on his body. The migrants body shows several scars and burns. Another stands on his head using insulting language telling him to look up at the camera. The second video...

Libya today is far from what it was under Colonel Ghaddaffi. In those days it was a strong sovereign state with ample wealth derived from oil. . . . Failed government policies in many sub-Saharan countries have led to great poverty for the masses and a sense on hopelessness in the youth. . . Is it any surprise that black Africans are being enslaved and sold in Libya and elsewhere in the Arab worls? Under the Jammeh regime women especially were being taken to Kuwait or one of the other Arab states and sold into semi-slavery. Freedom publicized a few...

Utterly destroying and eradicating radical Islamic terrorists has always been a top priority for President Donald Trump, and it appears another country feels the same way. Cockpit footage from the Libyan Air Force Dassault Mirage F1 fighter jet shows a slew of massive missile strikes on terrorists near the port city of Sirte. The three and a half minute cockpit footage begins with the aircraft flying over a beautiful beach. Things got bad for a group of Islamic State terrorists who were positioned alongside the shore. To be more specific, fighter jet blew the terrorists to smithereens.

A Libyan military source said earlier that armed men had planted explosives at the pipeline... Brent crude LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, rose $1.51, or 2.31 percent, to $66.76 a barrel by 11:40 a.m. (1640 GMT.) Prices hit a session high of $66.83 a barrel, the highest since late May 2015...Brent has risen 17 percent while U.S. crude has rallied about 11 percent in 2017. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia and other non-members, have been withholding some output since Jan. 1 to get rid of a glut... While the OPEC action has lent support...

Fighting terrorism is now morphing into clamping down on human migration, as far as the European Union is concerned. France’s President Emmanuel Macron is leading the charge, claiming at a conference in Paris last week that terrorism and human trafficking are part of the same problem, requiring the deployment of a military force spread across Africa. The melding of the two concepts provokes serious legal and moral questions. But so desperate, it seems, is the EU to halt illegal migration into the bloc that it is moving to militarize the problem in Africa – under the guise of “fighting terrorism”....

British diplomat Rebecca Dykes, working at the UK embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, was found dead along the side of a road early Saturday morning. Authorities are saying Dykes was murdered after finding her dead body tossed to the side of a major roadway over the weekend. It is believed Dykes had been at a party on Friday night and left by herself around midnight. The woman’s body was found alongside the Metn highway. Forensics suggests she died at 4:00 am Saturday morning. British ambassador Hugo Shorter issued the following statement.  The whole embassy is deeply shocked, saddened by this news. My thoughts...

The former top IT official to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, pleaded the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination — 90 times — in a federal court-ordered deposition on Oct. 24. John Bentel, the former Director of Information Resource Management of the Executive Secretariat, the office that handles information technology for the Office of the Secretary of State, was ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to answer questions under oath to the lawyers at the government watchdog group Judicial Watch. In his Aug. 19 order, Judge Sullivan wrote, “The Court is persuaded that Mr. Bentel should be deposed because...